Taste of Life: When Mother’s Day was celebrated on Pithori Amavasya

“Pithori Amavasya” was an annual “vrata” performed on the no moon day of “Shravan” and traditionally had been practised for the benefit of their children by women

The formal attempts to mythologise and retrofit our rituals and history to conform to a revivalist and reactionary point of view have been visible in recent years. Social media posts claiming the mention of Mother’s Day in Vedic literature are one such example.

Reverend Narayan Vaman Tilak, the Marathi poet who was born into a Chitpavan Koknastha Brahmin family and had famously converted to Christianity, was the first to celebrate Mother’s Day in Maharashtra. (SOURCED)

On July 12, 1936, a meeting was held at the Nutan Marathi Vidyalaya in Pune to discuss whether “Pithori Amavasya”, the new moon day of the month of “Shravan”, should be declared a holiday for schools in Pune. Prof NG Naralkar, the distinguished academician and the principal of the school, presided over the meeting attended by members of the school board and headmasters of other schools in the city.

According to Naralkar, “Pithori Amavasya” was a festival mainly celebrated in Konkan and Mumbai and the migrants from the region had carried it with them to Pune. Still, their number was not large enough to warrant a holiday. Most members argued that an event called “Matrudin” or Mother’s Day was celebrated on “Pithori Amavasya” and it had gained popularity in the last decade; more and more mothers had started celebrating the “Amavasya” at home while their children joined the Mother’s Day events in their schools. The rituals of “Pithori Amavasya” involved the mother feeding her children with choicest of dishes while she fasted the whole day; therefore, the children, after listening to speeches made by dignitaries in school for a few hours, should rush home to spend time with their mothers, the members said.

“Pithori Amavasya” was an annual “vrata” performed on the no moon day of “Shravan” and traditionally had been practised for the benefit of their children by women. Molesworth’s Dictionary mentioned that it was so called because of an observance called ”Pithora” or “Pathora”, which consisted of drawing with rice flour the figures of sixty-four “yoginis” and worshipping them. The “pooja” was usually performed in the evening and was under the special patronage of the fasting women of the house who made preparations for it during the day. The oldest woman of the family offered the goddesses the leaves of sixteen kinds of trees and flowers and a bunch of five to twenty-one coconuts and prayed to bless the children of the house. Then, arranging dishes of cooked food around the goddesses, the worshipper called the children one by one, asking them in turn who was worthy to eat the offerings. The child answered, “I am worthy.” This was thrice repeated, and the worshipper touched the child’s brow with “kunku”, and throwing grains of rice over it, blessed it and gave it the plate. Children and men sat down together to eat the food. Women ate after they had finished.

“Pithori Poojan” was celebrated with gusto in the Pathare Prabhu community of Mumbai and Pune. Children were given “vaayan” that consisted of a “thali” filled with fresh fruits, “mathalele ladoos” (roasted gram flour laddoos), and miniatures of assorted things like chicken, books, lamp, clothes, and other such items made of gram flour. Those who could afford sent “vaayans” to children of relatives as well. Mothers did not eat until their children were given “vaayan”. Dishes like “umbar” (a fried sweet made of rice flour and bananas), “guroli” (sweet semolina puri), “karanji”, and “vade” were cooked in Pathare Prabhu households.

It was Shripad Keshav Naik, a young and enthusiastic social activist from Mumbai, who came up with the ingenious idea of celebrating Mother’s Day on “Pithori Amavasya”.

Reverend Narayan Vaman Tilak, the Marathi poet who was born into a Chitpavan Koknastha Brahmin family and had famously converted to Christianity, was the first to celebrate Mother’s Day in Maharashtra. He was moved by the plight of women around him who were routinely beaten, molested, and abused. He detested the ironclad and religiously approved patriarchy. He deeply loved his mother and had witnessed his overbearing father harass and beat her. He found a way to celebrate motherhood when the news of a novel event called Mother’s Day being celebrated in the USA reached him.

Mother’s Day was a celebration honouring motherhood and the influence of mothers in society. It was usually celebrated on the second Sunday in May in the US. In nineteenth-century Britain, “Mothering Sunday” was celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent. On this day, clerics and curates were encouraged to visit their original mother churches. In 1907, Anna Jarvis organised the first Mother’s Day service of worship in West Virginia. Tilak combined both these traditions and started celebrating the Day.

His initiative soon gained popularity among the native Christian community in Maharashtra. But he also wanted non-Christians to celebrate Mother’s Day because he believed that motherhood was secular. But upper-caste Maharashtrian men were angry with him for renouncing Hinduism. He knew that he was hated and that the event would be looked at as “Western” and “Christian”.

He discussed the issue with Naik who took it upon himself to celebrate Mother’s Day on a large scale. He cleverly clubbed the event with “Pithori Amavasya”, a ritual that stressed the importance of motherhood. He established the Mother’s Day league in 1914 and organised functions in schools in Mumbai and Pune the next year. He wrote several articles in Marathi newspapers propagating the idea and soon the event was being celebrated in almost every city in the Bombay Presidency. Members of the Mother’s League did not fail to mention that the celebration of Mother’s Day was not “political” and that members of all religions and faiths celebrated the event every year. It had garnered support from distinguished men like Lord Lamington, Sir DA Vachcha, and Sir Dorabjee Tata.

Mother’s Day celebrations in Maharashtra were almost an all-male affair. The events in Pune and every other city were mostly organised by men who invited prominent men to address boys, girls, and women. These men highlighted the role a mother played in bringing up her children and did not fail to remind her that it was her responsibility to feed the child well and inculcate “good moral values”. Their eulogies took the support of the historical Indian society to project a desirable future society that relied on “ideal” children brought up by “ideal” mothers.

Men addressing the Mother’s Day events said that there was no other god comparable to the mother and equated her with the mother tongue and the motherland. These speeches sang many paeans for the most important duty a mother performed – that of raising a healthy child. They gave examples of historical and mythological figures like Yashoda, Madalasa, and Rajmata Jijabai to prove their point. Most speeches narrated Hirakani’s story, the poor milkmaid who lived near the Fort Torana during the reign of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. She had climbed down the fort in the dark to feed her child.

While going through the newspaper reports of Mother’s Day celebrations in Pune between 1915 and 1945, I noticed that most prominent socio-political women leaders from the city did not participate in the events. The 1920s and 30s were witness to zealous activists like Yashodabai Bhat, Lakshmibai Thuse, Vidyagauri Bakhle, and Lakshmibai Abhyakar who campaigned for the wellbeing of women. But their names do not appear in the reports published by newspapers like “Kaal”, “Dnyanaprakash”, and “Kesari”.

Mother’s Day speeches in Pune asked students to obey their mothers. The child had to eat and be polite, respectful, and patriotic. The mother had to make sure that the child ate and became a citizen who would bring glory to the country.

I could not find a single program being organized in Pune on Mother’s Day that dealt with the health of mothers. Most lectures centred on “infant welfare” and “mother-craft”. “Mother-craft” was the knowledge required to care for infants. Nurses from the Sassoon Hospital conducted classes in the 1930s to train pregnant women in breastfeeding.

In 1931, Ms Indumati Chonkar from Mumbai delivered a speech on the occasion of Mother’s Day. She stressed the need to teach “homely” duties like cooking to young girls so that they could look after their children once they birthed progeny. Only a “good” mother could give birth to and raise healthy children, and a “good” mother should know how to cook, she said.

The simple and limited role that upper-caste men conceptualised for women revolved around cooking and imparting moral values to the progeny. This was apparent in the Mother’s Day events celebrated in Mumbai and Pune in the early twentieth century and gives a glimpse of the complex image of women that evolved from divergent strands of nationalism, domesticity, and traditional patriarchy.

Naralkar’s opposition to a holiday on “Pithori Amavasya” was accepted by the members of the School Board. The Mother’s Day celebrations on the day slowly died down in the 1950s. The 1990s saw the slow emergence of the event in India by corporations selling greeting cards and other merchandise. But it was celebrated on the second Sunday of May and not on “Pithori Amavasya”.